Medicine in Barotrauma may seem a bit overwhelming at first, but for the most part it is actually rather straightforward:
- for burns and bleeding use bandages or plastiseal.
- for blood loss use blood packs if possible, or saline and alien blood if you are out of blood packs.
- for husk infection you can use broad-spectrum anti-biotics and calyxanide.
- for almost everything else use opioids: opium, morphine or fentanyl.
This covers 97.8% of common use cases for medicine in Barotrauma (82.2% of percentages are made up).
The short answer is you don't! Memorize these 4 commandments of European medicine and you are good to go!
The long answer is that the short answer is a lie. You may learn how to apply first aid on yourselves and cover most of your needs, but being a medic implies much more than its mechanical implications. We play a lot in campaign mode, and we are usually 5 or more players sailing for hours inside that canned death machine. The campaign is not necessarily difficult, bit it can be frustrating if the crew are not taking their survival seriously. We also like to roleplay and have defined responsabilities. Having someone take the role of "The Medic", regardless of Barotraumas Medic traits, is important to keep the flow going.
So what are the reponsabilities of the Medic? Simply put, to keep everybody alive. This may seem a little vague tho; isn't security in charge of the same thing? Stretch it enough and it may apply to everyone actually! Well, yes, but it varies in the "how". For me the Medic should:
- Always focus on not letting crewmates die. Between saving and killing, save then kill. Sometimes killing enemies is the best way to save an ally, but thats your judgement call. The important thing is that you know where your priorities are.
- Have medicine available for what you may encounter, most common stuff in the inventory, more specific stuff readily accessible and organized in your personal cabinet.
- Keep track of medical inventory. You need to know what you have and what you need.
- Fabricate medical necessities. If you have a medical fabricator on board, good for you. Otherwise, use the outpost ones. Be quick and efficient with this if you are in an outpost, respect your crews time and don't keep theim waiting too long, the outposts aren't the most exciting of places.
- Be sure that crewmates have emergency medical supplies, specially if they are going to be away from any dedicated medic.
- Give them powerups! Both temporary and permanent! Make each individual stronger than he would be without you! Hyperzine, Combat Stimulators, Endocrine Boosters and Genetic Enhancements are all tools at your disposal.
Don't forget to add your own non medic specific responsabilities just for the sake of it! Mine are:
- Taking care of the ships psilotoad
- Watering the plants
- Paralizing pirates so we turn them in alive
- Building tons of C4 and Compound N
- Helping with overal crew mantainance
This is a birds eye overview, the "what" if you may. Everything below is the "how".
The most common responsabilities of a medic are to tend to the wounded. It is mostly the 4 commandments stated above, but for the sake of thoroughness I thought I might add some details. I will also add how they are fabricated, since having these flowcharts helps me order production dependencies so that fabrication takes as least time as possible, which is particularly helpful when you do not have a medical fabricator on board.
When you see a crewmate dying and you are not sure if he is gonna make it, chances are he is bleeding and afflicted by severe bloodloss. Just in case, my first instinct is to give him a blood pack. More often than not, this is enough to put him back on his feet. After that you should have enough time to treat the rest of the injuries.
Use Blood Packs to treat bloodloss whenever possible. Saline is an inefficient but adecuate substitute. Alien Blood is actually good to treat bloddloss, but since it causes psychosys, I would advice against it unless its last resort or you are out of danger, which is rarely the case when treating bloodloss.
Regarding fabrication, I would advice to always have a good stack of blood, but dont overdo it. Fabricating saline is rarely worth it since I have other uses for Chlorine, and be sure you don't waste all of your Stabilizone creating Blood Packs.
flowchart LR
Sodium --> Saline
Chlorine --> Saline
Alien[Alien Blood] ---> Blood[Blood Pack]
Stabilizone ---> Blood
Saline --> Blood
You will be using a lot of opioids. Bites, gunshots, falling from stairs, the submarine crashing... all of those require opioids to heal quickly. Also, after applying a blood pack to a crewmate who is dying, a strong opioid like Fentanyl or Morphine is usually my next step.
Beware of opioid addiction and overdose. Usually applying 2 opioids in quick succession is safe for human crewmembers, but wait for a while if you need to apply more. If it is an emergency, use naloxone to counter addiction and overdose, although to be honest I hardly ever needed to use naloxone on human patients.
Usually I use Opium for small injuries, altho don't be afraid to not heal really small injuries like the ones caused by falling of stairs and the like. Morphine is my main opioid for treating medium or large injuries. Fentanyl is great, but it is usually more expensive and not always worth it. I tend to reserve Fentanyl for really bad injuries and emergency situations where you need to get your crewmate up quick and you do not have time to assess which is the proper treatment for your half dead friend.
There is a honorific mention for Pomegranade Extract, which is not an opioid and also not very efective, but treats the same conditions. What is good about it is that it does not cause opioid addiction or overdose. I rarely use it to be honest, but maybe it swits you if you have a Pomegranade plant.
Regarding fabrication, try to have many available of each opioid, slightly favoring morphine. Also, ethanol is useful to recharge welding fuel tanks, so do not drain it all on Fentanyl. Adrenaline is only used for Fentanyl tho, so expend it at will.
flowchart LR
Opium ---> Morphine
Morphine --> Fentanyl
Adrenaline ----> Fentanyl
Ethanol ----> Fentanyl
flowchart LR
Morphine[Morphine] --> Naloxone
Stabilizone[Stabilizone] --> Naloxone
Bandages treat burns and bleedings. The thing with bandages is that you do not freecuently need them. Small bleedings heal on their own and some small burns are not worth treating. When you do need bandages however, you usually lots of them, since you have to treat the affected parts of the body individually, which means a single patient usually needs 4 to 6 bandages to be fully healed.
Ballast flora, failing to repair junction boxes and ruin traps are some examples of things that cause burns, while almost every combat injury causes bleeding. If you identify a severe bleeding, treat it as soon as the patient is out of risk of death by bloodloss. Otherwise, concentrate on applying opioids first.
Usually a bandage is enough for each body part, but I usually use Plastiseal nontheless since it is better and only costs some extra elastin.
For fabrication, Organic Fiber does not have much more useful usages other than creating bandages, so create as many bandages as you need. Organic fiber is easier to store tho, so if you have enough bandages and plastiseal just store the organic fiber for later. Unless I need elastin for something else, I usually just convert all bandages into plastiseal and use those. I did not mention antibiotic glue, which is better than both bandages and plastiseal, because it is rather expensive to create and you do not really need it.
flowchart LR
Organic[Organic Fiber] --> Bandage
Bandage --> Plastiseal
Elastin ---> Plastiseal
With an adecuate medicine level, you should see the husk parasite in patients at 20% or more. This means that it is possible to not detect that someone has the parasite at early stages. If I suspect that someone has been infected, either because of fighting agains crawlers with a loose tonge or against husk infected colonists, just apply broad-spectrum antibiotics and forget about it. If infection is higher, broad-spectrum antibiotics may not heal it completely, although it may seem that it did. Either check the patient recovery for some minutes, or apply calyxanide.
I usually carry antibiotics on me to treat emergencies, and then go look for calyxanide immediately after if needed.
flowchart LR
Calyx[Calyx Extract] --> Calyxanide
Stabilizone --> Calyxanide
It is not usual that you need to do this, but first thing you need to do if you need to treat this is apply stabilozine. This should give you some time to look for the approproate antidote, should you have it.
Sometimes reactive medicine is not enough. There is no use in knowing how to heal appropriately if the patient arrives inside of a plastic bag. When you anticipate danger and not so favorable odds, like when destroying nests or destroying ruin guardians, you want make them bigger, better, faster, stronger.
This is not really a buff, but it prolongs their duration. I usually apply one tonic liquid alongside any other buff that I want to apply, two if I think this is going to take long.
flowchart LR
Tonic[Tonic Liquid]
Calcium --> Tonic
Zinc --> Tonic
Potassium --> Tonic
You could actually use steroids and methanfetamines separately, but it is usually simpler and better to just use Hyperzine, given that you have the resources. This will make them much faster, hit harder with melee weapons, have damage resistance and stun resistance. Hyperzyne is somewhat complex and hard to make tho, and uses many resources that you need for other things, such as chlorine, tonic liquid and fentanyl.
flowchart LR
Tonic[Tonic Liquid]
Steroids[Anabolic Steroids]
Phosphorus ---> Methamphetamine
Chlorine ---> Methamphetamine
Carbon ---> Methamphetamine
Tonic --> Steroids
Fentanyl --> Steroids
Steroids --> Hyperzine
Methamphetamine --> Hyperzine
This makes the user self heal for a while and reduce stun duration. While really powerful, it is somewhat expensive, since it uses Sulphurite Shards, which you need for Endocrine Boosters. This is more preference than anything, although I would suggest using sulphurite on endocrine boosters until all your crew has the extra talents they want, and then then focus on combat stimulants.
flowchart LR
Stimulant[Combat Stimulant]
Suplhurite[Sulphurite Shard] --> Stimulant
Morphine --> Stimulant
This is where being a medic truly shines. Your crewmates may even be full level and full talents, or at least that is what they think but its your job to experiment with them make them even better!
This is what I use sulphurite shards for, and why its the main resource to look after (apart from genetic material, but more on that later). An endocrine booster is relatively expensive, but its worth the trouble. Giving a crewmember some extra talents (albeit random) may greatly enhance (or even change) the way they play. Be sure to check which talents are best for each crew member and inject them with endocrine boosters until they get them. Also, these bonuses are not lost on death.
flowchart LR
Sulphurite[Sulphurite Shard]
Endocrine[Endocrine Booster]
Deusizine --> Endocrine
Paralyxis ----> Endocrine
Sulphurite ----> Endocrine
Antibiotics[Broad-spectrum Antibiotics]
Glue[Antibiotic Glue]
Antibiotics --> Glue
Elastin --> Glue
Stabilizone --> Glue
Glue --> Deusizine
Fentanyl --> Deusizine
Oxygenite[Liquid Oxygenite] ---> Deusizine
This is one of the best ways to provide uniqueness. You can at most have 4 of these, since you can combine 2, and place 2 of those in an advance gene splicer.
| gene | bonus | recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Crawler | Increases swimming speed by [10-50]% | |
| Hammerhead | Allows the subject to to do [20-100]% more damage with melee weapons | |
| Mantis | Increases movement speed on land by [10-25]% | |
| Moloch | Increases resistance to physical damage by [10-25]% | |
| Tiger Thresher | Decreases the subject's oxygen consumption by [20-100]% | Good if you do not want to forfeit chat by getting husk |
| Hammerhead Matriarch | Makes the subject's physical injuries heal at a rate of [6-45]% per minute | Excellent. Does not heal burns. |
| Hunter | Receiving physical damage makes the subject gain a [75-150]% boost to melee weapon damage | |
| Mollusc | Receiving physical damage makes the subject gain [10-60]% Vigor | |
| Skitter | Receiving physical damage makes the subject gain [10-60]% Hyperactivity | |
| Husk | Prevents Husk Infections from advancing to the point where they take control of their host. | Great, but does not let you speak in game or use text chat. I also always leave a some low tier ones in case of emergency treating of husk infection. Also, it is worth upping them up to 100% since that way it does not deteriorate the other gen when combined. |
| Mudraptor | Causes the subject to grow a mudraptor-like beak, which can be used to attack enemies and break doors with the [Creature Attack] key | not useful |
| Spineling Causes the subject to grow spineling-like bony protrusions out of their back, which can be shot out with the [Creature Attack] key | not useful |
I do not really use much poisons, but I do use paralizants. They are useful for making prisoners stay put.
flowchart LR
Chloral[Chloral Hydrate]
Chlorine --> Chloral
Ethanol --> Chloral
Chloral --> Paralizant
Paralyxis ---> Paralizant
Another guide on how to play medic: Seems to be a little more focused on playing with randoms and potential griefers, and maybe I do not agree in all, but a good guide nontheless.